George Navarro, Misty (Week 7)

In the essay “Chicanx Graphics in the Digital Age”, Claudia E. Zapata discusses the digital revolution that took place in the 1980s and how it brought influential technological advancements to Chicanx artist production. The author makes a point to recognize that though this has not replaced canonical forms of Chicanx art, technological advancements have helped diversify the work Chicanx artists produce, especially work that is produced for advocacy purposes. The digital revolution allowed Chicanx artists to participate in technological exchange centers, share their work online, and use augmented and virtual reality technology in their work which helped expand the traditional definition of Chicano graphics which usually referred to poster and print. 

This essay helped  legitimize the art that I have had the access to growing up thanks to the internet. When I was younger, and though I look back now and this thought process does not really make sense, I thought that the only art that could be considered “actual art” were the pieces that could be found in museums. Not only were museums not really accessible to me, but when I was able to go the art that I saw was usually not created by Latine people, much less Mexican/Chicana women. It also did not help that Chicanx art or Chicanx history in general was never really taught to me growing up. However, what I did have access to was the internet, specifically Tumblr and Twitter which Zapata highlights in the section Web 2.0. Zapata states that the emergence of Web 2.o allowed Chicanx artists to create and have the unfettered ability to share their “born-digital” work. And it is thanks to this emergence that gave me access to art that I was finally able to relate to, that challenged the societal and cultural norms and expectations that I was being taught, that shed light on political issues that are important to me, and to find a sense of familiarity in an artistic space.